Tuesday, June 26, 2012

What's wrong with the Joplin Globe?

I have heard many reasons given for the decline of newspapers in today's society.

Some say it is because newspapers have been supplanted by new media. Why should someone have to wait until the next morning to find out what is happening when that information is available on a desktop computer, a laptop, or even on your phone?

I read one story that said people are abandoning newspapers because of the newspapers' liberal agenda.

Sorry, that one doesn't even come close. Most newspapers do not have any kind of agenda. They are flailing in the wind.

Newspapers started the glacial process of committing suicide when they forgot about news, at least the kind of news that serves their communities.

I am not privy to the decision-making process at Community Newspapers Holding, the concern that operates the Globe and numerous other daily newspapers, but I am sure that someone at the top of the ladder decided the company could milk a few more dollars out of Joplin residents by forcing them to subscribe to the newspaper or its e-edition in order to have access to full obituaries.

The precedent had already been set when the Globe (or its corporate masters) decided that obituaries, birthdays, wedding announcements, engagements, and anniversaries were not news. Somewhere along the line someone forgot to tell the Globe that it is not the New York Times or the Washington Post.

Joplin is not a metropolitan community.

I have read the Joplin Globe for more than four decades. It was always in my home as I was growing up. Even during the times when we could not afford the daily newspaper, we always subscribed to the Sunday edition and looked forward to it each week.

The front page was almost always filled with actual news and I devoured every story. Now, it is a newspaper that appears to be edited by focus groups. How else can you explain a Sunday Joplin Globe where most of page one is dominated by the anniversary of Title IX? Undeniably, Title IX has made a huge difference in bringing equality to women in sports. It would be worthy of a column in the sports section and perhaps an AP story with a local sidebar on an inside page, but what kind of message is that sending to the readership when that is the best you can come up with for the showcase page of your Sunday edition?

If it's not Title IX, it is some other trend. Apparently, it is not worth putting in the pages of the Joplin Globe unless it is trending on Twitter.

The pages of weddings, deaths, anniversaries, engagements, and complete obituaries that used to make the Sunday paper a highly anticipated weekly event are a thing of the past. The Globe has written off a large portion of its potential readership with the attitude that if you don't have the money, you don't belong on our pages.

I remember the furor over the Globe's decision to begin charging for obituaries back in the 1990s. The newspaper took the heat and before too long people stopped complaining.

I received about a dozen e-mails over the past couple of weeks complaining about the Globe's new policy of not printing obituaries or even death notices with the time and location of the funeral on its website. People asked me, "What can we do?"

Sadly, the answer is nothing. That decision, no matter what anyone tells you at the Globe, is made far outside of Joplin, by people who are so desperate to come up with new sources of revenue that they can't even see the long-term damage they are doing to their product.

The death of newspapers came when companies bought hundreds of them and changed them into cookie-cutter copies of each other, deciding that the same thing that works in Alabama will work in Missouri or Texas.

It doesn't. The beauty of a strong community newspaper is that it serves its community and no two communities are alike.

The need for a newspaper (whether it is in print or electronic format) is as great as it has ever been. But don't expect people to support a newspaper just because it is important that newspapers survive.  If the Joplin Globe and other newspapers across this country want to continue well into the 21st Century, they need to reexamine the product they are delivering and remember the true meaning of community.


13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would suggest that the demise of the Globe is related to its reluctance to tackle hard-hitting local stories that the public would devour. Such as the shenanigans with the MSSU Board of Governors and President Speck. Last month, a Globe reporter wrote a pretty good story about a faculty survey that indicated widespread dissatisfaction with Speck. Speck was quoted as saying that he hadn't had the time to look at the survey yet, because of Obama's upcoming visit. So where's the follow-up story now? Surely Speck has had the opportunity to review the survey?

Anonymous said...

An excellent piece, Randy, and one that many need to read in this day and age. I thought The Globe used some good judgment the other day when it ran my guest editorial, but then, of course, I'm more than a little biased in this particular case. That said, The Globe obviously has some room for improvement in terms of being truly a community newspaper, and so do any number of other papers across the country. Dad's reminder that "all you have to sell is local news" is just as true today as it was back in 1977 when he uttered those words to a young reporter just starting out in the field. Unfortunately, however, the basic message is falling on deaf ears in the typical corporate boardroom. Rick Nichols.

Anonymous said...

My solution is to go to the web sites of Parker and MW mortuaries, they have the obits there with services listed. Guess I do not need the globe after all!

Anonymous said...

To bad some Big Daddy with lots of money can't step in and buy the Globe and some of the other community newspapers and let them be what they truly should be...A Life Line For The Community.
Hal W

Anonymous said...

I am a long-time reader of the Globe. I am friends with a great many staff members. I have been loyal and faithful to the Globe--but it has not been that to me. Its lack of coverage of the tragedy at MSSU, its failure to tell the many hard-hitting news stories that exist in the city, and its decision to keep the web site nothing more than a blog--all of these things are apalling. Please, Joplin Globe, publish the NEWS--regardless of whom it might hurt, even if they are advertisers.

Anonymous said...

More cowbell!

Anonymous said...

When I was growing up in the 1970's, my sisters and I used to fight over the People section in the Sunday Globe. There were at least two pages of engagement and wedding announcements. Now on a typical Sunday, you might find three (total) engagement and wedding announcements. No one grabs for the People section any more. The Globe started charging for these announcements in the 1990's, and people generally won't pay to have them in the paper.

Anonymous said...

Here's another perspective, from the Globe's sports pages. The Globe gives extensive coverage to the Joplin Outlaws baseball team, even though some games have only 20 people in attendance. That tells me that the community doesn't care about the Outlaws. On the other hand, a Little League baseball game might have triple that number. Yet you won't read a single word about Little League baseball in the Globe.

Anonymous said...

I believe that one of the many reasons that the Lamar Press that you started a few years ago was so popular was the local news and the down-to-earth columns. You were given the privilege of reading it and deciding for yourself what you believed. I don't want a lecture. I want the news - without the newspaper's opinion - so I can form MY opinion on facts.

Anonymous said...

I stopped viewing The Globe as a real newspaper when it's publisher (Beatty?) became more interested in covering up the problems at MSSU than reporting them. Last year, he sent president Speck an e-mail saying The Globe coverage would be positive from that point on and even offered to meet with Speck to give him tips on how to handle the press. How do we know this? The Chart, the school paper at MSSU, uncovered an the publisher's e-mail to Speck via the sunshine law which grants tax payers access to such information at state-sponsored institutions. Speck, of course, has since fired the advisor to The Chart and replaced him with someone more sympathetic to the administration. Now, the Turner Report is the last local news source that actually covers the numerous problems at MSSU.

Anonymous said...

I stopped viewing The Globe as a real newspaper when it's publisher (Beatty?) became more interested in covering up the problems at MSSU than reporting them. Last year, he sent president Speck an e-mail saying The Globe coverage would be positive from that point on and even offered to meet with Speck to give him tips on how to handle the press. How do we know this? The Chart, the school paper at MSSU, uncovered an the publisher's e-mail to Speck via the sunshine law which grants tax payers access to such information at state-sponsored institutions. Speck, of course, has since fired the advisor to The Chart and replaced him with someone more sympathetic to the administration. Now, the Turner Report is the last local news source that actually covers the numerous problems at MSSU.

Anonymous said...

Didn't know the Globe was still in business. SouthernWatch provides an excellent, if adult, take on the downfall and inevitable closing of MSSU.

Unknown said...

The sunday paper is now $2.00
what a ripoff.going online where its free